The area has already been heavily logged. “Right at the Nightcrawler zone there’s probably a 2.5 kilometre by 1.5 kilometre cut block just put in there last year.”

Community relations are good, he adds. “We have quite a number of shareholders in 100 Mile House and the first nations are onside. We’ve got a few working for us right now.”

Currently that work consists of an approximately 1,200-metre, 12- to 15-hole step-out campaign scheduled to end in August. Again, they’re looking for near-surface finds. “A lot of the drill holes are pretty short, so we can get a lot done for a few bucks,” Blann points out. “We’re drilling quite shallow.”

It’s not often that a junior delivers the best drill result in the Western world, at least in recent memory.—David Blann, president/CEO of Happy Creek Minerals

Of course costs are crucial in times like these. With himself, one full-time geologist and a part-time CFO, Blann insists his company’s frugal. “Our overhead is about as low as it gets for a junior.” But he emphasizes the company gets valuable direction from its directors and advisory board.

Furthermore “we own all our projects 100%. So there’s no gun to our heads for minimum commitments and obligations. We can sit tight if we have to and keep these assets until the right deal comes along.”

Those assets, all in B.C., include the Rateria and West Valley properties totalling about 18,000 hectares adjacent to Canada’s largest copper producer, Teck Resources’ TSX:TCK.B Highland Valley mine. “I had a number of majors looking at the project, including neighbours,” says Blann. “Currently it’s a bit small for a major to come in and build a mine. But what they are starting to recognize is we’ve only tested a small portion of the property and we’ve got the right geology.”

Among last year’s assays was 0.35% copper over 152.5 metres, starting at 172.5 metres. That was found “six and a half kilometres by easy road access from one of Teck’s pits. In fact what we’ve been drilling is better grade than one of their pits.”

Blann says Happy Creek got the past-producing Silver Dollar property through a legal settlement “at virtually zero cost.” Last year’s grab and chip samples on the road-accessible project showed high silver-gold grades over “an amazing eight or nine-kilometre-long trend. It just hasn’t had the drilling done.”

Other properties include Silverboss, a copper-molybdenum-gold-silver prospect adjacent to Boss Mountain; Hen, a copper-lead prospect about 16 kilometres south; Art-DL, a gold prospect adjacent to Hen; and Hawk, a copper-gold prospect 24 klicks south of Boss.

“We’ve done our homework on all of them,” Blann points out. “We’ve done our soil sampling, stream sampling, geology, mapping, trenching, geophysics. We’re now at the stage where we’ve got a number of really good drill targets.” But with Happy Creek focused on Fox, he’s hoping other juniors will take notice of the company’s additional projects.